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Pacific Historian
HUMP PILOTS HOLD LAST REUNION
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 8, 2011
WWII aviators flew supplies over Himalayas.
JOINT BASE CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA — They are
among the last of the greatest generation, World
War II pilots who coaxed Curtiss C-46 Commando
cargo planes laden with supplies over the highest
mountain range in the world from India and Burma
to China in what was called flying the Hump.
Still their wits are sharp, their stories of
battling horrendous weather and Japanese fighters
compelling and their legs spry even climbing into
the cockpit of the military's latest generation
transport, the battle-gray Boeing C-17 Globemaster III.
But, with so few of them left, this month's
reunion of the so-called Hump pilots who flew
over the Himalaya Mountains was their last.
The reunions began back in 1946. Only six pilots
were on hand last week, meeting with reporters at
an antebellum garden and visiting Joint Base
Charleston, an airlift base where a new
generation of planes ferries supplies to American troops around the world.
"We had hoped to have more people come but most
of our guys are in their 90s," said 91-year-old Bill Thomas of Charleston.
Dwindling numbers, age and infirmity are taking
their toll. The China-Burma-India Hump Pilot
Association itself formally disbanded in 2005
because its members were getting older.
Pilots began flying the Hump in 1942 to get
supplies to China in its fight against Japan
after the Japanese seized the Burma Road, closing
the only land route. The operation continued
until 1945 when the war ended. Almost 600
aircraft were lost with almost 1,700 dead or
missing, according to the association.
"Weather was a big, big problem, as were
navigation problems and Japanese fighters,"
recalled 88-year-old Bill Gilmore of Mason, Ohio.
"There were thunderstorms all the time. The monsoon season was really bad."
Through summer and early fall there were
thunderstorms severe enough to damage aircraft.
Flying weather was clearer in the late fall and
winter, but that brought out Japanese fighters
and valleys were constantly fogged in.
Pilots also battled mechanical problems,
exacerbated by a lack of parts and the fact the
C-46 Curtiss Commando was a new production model.
"The C-46 was rushed into production and the bugs
hadn't been worked out," Gilmore said. "The bugs
were worked out over the Hump."
Another Hump pilot, Ted Connolly of Miami,
Florida, died two years ago but his wife, Joanne,
attended the reunion keeping his memory alive and
sharing a story of one of his missions.
"He said the Japanese fighters came on and just
played with them," she recalled, adding the
fighter shot up the transport so badly it couldn't be flown.
"He told his crew to bail out, which they did and
he said he got scared to jump out of the airplane
and he managed to get it back," she said. "He got
away because he maneuvered and flew the Jap into the mountain."
Tex Rankin, 91, of Fort Worth, Texas, said he's
saddened the fellowship is coming to an end.
"I enjoy these meetings," he laughed. "We like to
get together and tell the lies. As I told my
wife, every time we meet, the Himalaya Mountains
get higher, the weather gets worse and there are
more Japanese fighters in the sky than there were in the whole fleet."
But before the fellowship dissolved, the pilots
visited with today's military transport crews and
toured a C-17, something Gilmore had never seen up close.
"I was amazed. The size of the cabin for the cargo was unbelievable," he said.
Later they had lunch with air crews based in Charleston.
"With C-17s we're high above the weather. We're
above the clouds and the mountains are beautiful
to look at and not really a threat. For you guys
flying, it was your main threat and that does not
go unnoticed by the people in this room who fly,"
Lieutenant Colonel Rebecca Sonkiss, commander of
the 15th Airlift Squadron of the 437th Airlift
Wing told the pilots later. "Thank you for what you did."
As Gilmore looks back, what he and his buddies
did never got as much attention as the war in the
Pacific or Europe. But he said it was important to the Allied victory.
"Through the Hump we were able to keep perhaps a
million Japanese soldiers in China where they
could have been in the South Pacific and delayed
the war there for who knows how long," he said.
"It played a role, but nobody knew about it."
